For the purposes of this article, Clinician Support and Customer Support are interchangeable. Although this is written with clinicians in mind, you may find that it serves as an easy way to stay on the pathway to delivering better customer service.

It starts with understanding what Clinician/Customer Support is. There isn't an outlined definition for Clinician Support so we're going to lean into the one we use for Customer Support. There are a few ways to define Customer Support and the version I like the most, for now, is - A range of services to assist customers in making cost-effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, troubleshooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. - Wikipedia

I want to take this definition and tweak it, a bit, to better fit a Clinician. While the customer support definition can be applied to someone who purchases a product or a service, clinicians aren't buying a product. Clinicians are signing an agreement and accepting a position with a healthcare provider. Without going too deep down the rabbit hole of defining clinician support I feel it should be along the lines of the following, A range of services to assist clinicians in planning, troubleshooting, applying changes, and overcoming obstacles, within their contracted healthcare enterprise. I wouldn't call this a completed or finalized definition. It can be a dynamic foundation that evolves over time. With that in mind here's one method that I would use to provide GREAT Clinician Support.

Guide - When a clinician approaches you with a problem or a concern it's paramount that you are prepared to guide them toward resolution. It might be as simple as connecting them with a piece of information and it could mean staying involved in the solution by helping them to navigate a more technical concern. You're tasked with being their Guide in the journey to resolve their concerns.

Rapport - You'll have to build a rapport with your clinicians. Building rapport is synonymous with building trusting relationships. How do you build trust? You ask the right questions and forecast the next steps. Asking the right questions demonstrates that you understand the clinician's concern. "Seek first to understand" - Stephen Covey. Additionally, if you can forecast the next steps and what to expect you'll eliminate the stress of the unknown. There's nothing more stressful than suspense, it's the key ingredient and driver of anxiety. Eliminate that stress by delivering the next steps.

Empathy - Our friend empathy pops up again. The key to unlocking empathy is to realize that it's a simple understanding of the core feelings and emotions your counterpart is experiencing. You don't need to have had the exact same issue in order to be empathetic. You need to draw on your own relationship with their core emotions. An example could be if a clinician's $100,000 bonus was paid incorrectly. You might not have ever received a bonus of that nature so you could be thinking, how can I relate to that type of problem? Perhaps you've experienced the stress of any paycheck or expected and anticipated deposit not being processed correctly. Draw on your own experiences and relate to how they made you feel. Now respond to them the same way you wished someone would have replied to you in your time need.

Advocate - Clinicians spend a lot of their time advocating for their patients. They're driven to provide them with the best care and support and are seeking the best possible outcome. Their actions will determine the outcome of a patient's procedure and will impact their aftercare for years to come. We want to do the same thing on behalf of our clinicians. Don't confuse advocacy for fighting, it's not about arguing with others on behalf of your clinician. It's about supporting and acting in favor of them when they meet opposition. If your child needed support at school you'd advocate on their behalf to help them receive the resources needed to appropriately complete an objective. We do the same for our clinicians.

Teamwork - "If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together"- Martha Goedert. In many cases, we have to negotiate solutions for the clinicians with people on other teams. It's critical that we learn to work with members of tangential teams. The people on these teams have different permissions and varying levels of visibility that can help us resolve the concerns of our clinicians. "Never be mean to someone who can hurt you by doing nothing" Chris Voss. Remember that as a member of a Clinician support team, you're going to be working inter-departmentally with people to resolve these obstacles. You're building relationships and rapport on both sides of this equation. Finding a solution to your clinician's obstacles will often be defined by how well you can work with the people who can deliver the solution.

As I work to discover a better way to articulate a mission for delivering clinician support I'll practice the foundational elements of providing G.R.E.A.T. Clinician Support.

As always, I'm a human being and I make mistakes. You may notice some in this article. If you do, please message me privately and I'll work to correct them. Thank you for taking the time to read this article and if you found it interesting please consider liking it and sharing it with your network.